


Spin the Bottle

by Snickfic



Category: Ready or Not (2019)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, An improbably happy-ish ending, Deal with a Devil, Dubious Consent, Magical Pregnancy, Mpreg, Multi, Ritual Sex, Rough Sex, Sibling Incest, Threesome - F/M/M, Vaginal Sex, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-08
Updated: 2020-09-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:27:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26354950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snickfic/pseuds/Snickfic
Summary: Grace draws a different card. She's not much more impressed this time around.
Relationships: Alex Le Domas/Daniel Le Domas, Alex Le Domas/Daniel Le Domas/Grace Le Domas, Alex Le Domas/Grace Le Domas, Daniel Le Domas/Grace Le Domas
Comments: 14
Kudos: 58
Collections: We Die Like Fen 4: We Lived to Die Afen, We die afen and afen





	Spin the Bottle

**Author's Note:**

  * For [scorpiod](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scorpiod/gifts).



> Also contains: rough sex, fear of pregnancy, references to previous underage sex. This is an AU where Daniel never married Charity.
> 
> scorpiod, I've never written for this fandom before, but I found your prompts really inspiring! I didn't get a chance to rewatch the movie, so apologies for any canon errors. I hope you enjoy the fic. :) 
> 
> Huge thanks to my beta Stripy, who pushed and prodded this into shape on very short notice. All remaining errors are mine.

Let’s be real, what Grace really wants right now is for Alex to carry her over the threshold of their bedroom and carefully disentangle her from all this lace—or maybe rip it off her, because guess what, the Le Domases are rich as fuck, and it’s not like she’s going to wear this dress again anyway.

But this is her family now, a family like she’s dreamed of for so long, and so instead she’s sitting around this table, and she’s going to pull a card out of this weird old box—huh. She thought a family whose fortunes were built on a board game empire would at least play, you know, Monopoly. Settlers of Catan. Le Bail’s Gambit, which was one of their own. “Spin the bottle?” she reads aloud. “Really?”

There’s a collective exhale around the table. It’s almost like a draft blowing through the room. Maybe the others were hoping for something more fun, too.

Tony smacks his hands together. Grace jumps, and so does Alex. “Sounds like a good time!” Tony says. “Get in a circle, everyone.”

“Okay, this is kind of fucked up, right?” Grace whispers to Alex. She takes a closer look. “You’re really pale. Are you okay? Can we duck out early? I promise I won’t be disappointed not to kiss your dad or whoever.” Seriously, who the fuck played spin the bottle with their _family_? Much less on someone’s wedding night, what the fuck?

“It’s okay,” Alex says. He’s not meeting her eyes.

“Alex, what’s wrong?”

“Here we go,” Tony says firmly. Grace realizes everyone else is already settling into a circle on the tile floor, leaving a gap just wide enough for her and Alex. Someone’s found an empty bottle from somewhere, and it’s sitting in the center, glinting in the golden glow of the candelabras.

“Come on, children, join the party,” Tony says.

Emilie titters. Yeah, that girl is high as fuck. Grace kind of wishes she tried to score some weed off Emilie earlier. Oh well. Grace sits carefully next to Fitch, just managing not to trip on her own dress. Alex sits next to her. He looks like he might puke. 

“You first, dear,” Becky says, smiling at Grace. Her expression is strained, and it’s kind of worrying.

“Right,” Grace says. She reaches into the middle of the circle, grips the bottle between thumb and forefinger—feeling like she’s regressing about a decade—and spins.

The bottle takes longer to slow down than she remembers. It must be only a couple of seconds, but she feels like she could get lost in that glinting rotation, mesmerized by it, like she found some weed after all and didn’t remember. 

But it does slow at last. The mouth of the bottle comes to a stop in front of Daniel, ugh. Of course it does. 

“Of course,” he says, like he can hear her thoughts. “Of course it’s me.” He gives her a cheerful leer. “Well?”

For fuck’s sake.

Grace has to lean over Fitch and Emilie to get to him. He reeks of bourbon. He doesn’t make a move as she approaches; even his leer drops away. He’s just watching with that smile on his lips that he always has when he looks at her, that one she can’t read but knows she hates. 

It’s over in a moment. She brushes her lips against his scruffy, unshaven cheek, smacks them for effect, and retreats hurriedly to her own seat in the circle.

“Well,” says Tony, suddenly all business. “I think we’ve kept my son and his bride too long already, don’t you?” 

“Wait, what?” Grace says, but everyone else is already getting to their feet. Emilie’s saying something about wanting to check on the kids, which Grace has already figured out is code for ‘take another hit,’ and Fitch reaches past Grace to slap Alex on the knee and wish him luck. Ew. Tony’s stroking Becky’s arm. They both look—kind of upset, honestly.

“That was really it?” Grace asks Alex, turning—and then she stops cold. He looks like he’s about to faint. 

“Let’s just go,” he says, pushing to his feet. He drags her up with him, half-leaning on her in the process.

“Alex, what the fuck is going on?”

He doesn’t answer her. He does that sometimes, and she’s always let it go—it’s always about shit with his family, and she knows she can’t relate, not how she wants to. She doesn’t want to push him. But it’s never been on her wedding night before. He’s never looked physically ill. “Alex—”

“Just get him to the bridal suite,” Daniel says in her ear. She didn’t realize he was anywhere near her. “I bet he’ll perk right up.”

“Fuck you,” Alex says, which is maybe the weirdest thing that has happened so far in a night of really fucking weird things. For reasons Grace doesn’t understand, Alex adores Daniel. Alex _idolizes_ Daniel.

Daniel only gives Alex that same enigmatic smile he keeps giving Grace. “I’ll help,” he says, and takes Alex’s other elbow.

Alex doesn’t shake him off, and so there Daniel is, escorting them to their own wedding chamber. Maybe Grace even appreciates it a little, because Alex is kind of freaking her out, and nobody else even seems to notice. It feels like a long walk down to Grace and Alex’s room. Their footsteps are muffled in the rugs and sharp on the hardwood, echoing all the way up and down the hall. 

They get to the door, and Grace pushes it in. “I can take it from here,” she tells Daniel.

“Oh, didn’t you hear?” Daniel says. “I’m your party favor.”

“What?”

“He’s coming, too,” Alex says. 

“ _What_?”

“Tell her, Alex,” Daniel says. He’s leaning against the door frame, just smiling. He’s really drunk, Grace realizes. She didn’t realize until now just how drunk. Alex must have been holding him up as much as the other way around. “Tell her what she signed on for when she made those marriage vows.”

“Tell him to shut up and leave us alone,” Grace says. She’s past all pretense of diplomacy.

Alex smooths his hand over her shoulder, like he’s soothing a cat. “He has to stay. Just—just for the night.”

“What are you talking about? I’m not having sex in front of your drunken lech brother.”

“Ouch,” Daniel says mildly.

“Grace, please—”

“Please _what_.”

“Shall I?” Daniel says.

Grace glares at him. Alex rolls his eyes and walks away, pulling at his tie.

“So,” Daniel says, “One time, a few generations ago, we made a deal with the devil.”

He leans into that doorframe and tells a whole story, a bullshit fairy tale of fortunes and curses. Everyone who marries into the family pulls a card from the box. Most of them are harmless.

“We played checkers with Fitch,” Alex says, the first words Grace has heard from him in a while.

And some of them aren’t. “Hide and seek, for example,” Daniel says.

“What about hide and seek?” Grace asks.

“Shut _up_ ,” Alex says.

Daniel shrugs and keeps going. “I don’t think anyone’s ever gotten spin the bottle before, though. It’s in the family lore, but you’re the first to draw it. Lucky you, Grace.” 

“What happens in spin the bottle?” She’s pretty sure she doesn’t want to know. What she does want to do is slap that eternal smile off Daniel’s face. God, she hates that smile, drunk and smug and something else she still can’t quite place.

“One of us gets to knock you up tonight,” Daniel says. “The other one dies.”

Grace looks at Daniel. She looks at Alex, who still won’t meet her eye. She opens her mouth, and what comes out is the stupidest possible thing she could say in this whole stupid situation. “I’m—on birth control?”

Daniel heaves a sigh and closes his eyes. “Of course you are.”

“Grace doesn’t want kids yet,” Alex says, in a very small voice.

“Fuck you, Alex,” Daniel says, as sharp as Grace has ever heard him said anything. He covers his eyes. “Fuck. You didn’t want to tell her, and now she’s going to die, too, so good job on that one.”

“I’m not going to _die_ ,” Grace says. Hysterical laughter bubbles up out of her, like the carbonation in the champagne earlier. 

“If you don’t get pregnant before the sun rises, then we _all_ die,” Alex says.

“This is just a joke,” Grace says, desperately wanting to believe it, but she’s never seen that hopeless look on Alex’s face before. “There’s no such thing as the devil. It’s all bullshit. You’re just pranking me, which I have to say I really don’t—”

“I saw him,” Alex says, surprisingly firm.

“Alex,” Daniel says, like a caution.

Alex shakes his head. “Once, when I was a kid. I saw him sitting at the head of the table. He’s real.”

“The devil,” Grace says, so that Alex can deny it. Obviously Alex didn’t see the _devil_.

Alex does not deny it.

It continues like that for a little longer, Alex impatient, Daniel sardonic—but less than before. He looks at her like she’s a tragedy, which is a lot worse than any of his smiles. He doesn’t even look that drunk anymore. 

“You’re both insane,” Grace says at last, at least half an hour late, and shoves past Daniel and out of the room.

She doesn’t know where she’s going, really. Away, to somewhere with booze. She gets lost on the way to the kitchen and ends up in one of the parlors. Well, it has booze, too. Same difference. She gulps down a glass of bourbon, too fast, so that she has to hold onto the cute little drinks table until she can breathe through the nausea. Then she grabs the whole bottle and heads for the door. Halfway there, she whirls around and staggers back for a second bottle. Might as well be prepared.

There’s a feeling creeping over her, like the one that comes at the beginning of a nightmare. Maybe Alex isn’t who she thought he was. Maybe he was right all along, and his family isn’t the one she secretly hoped it would be: a family of her own.

Maybe she made a mistake.

She doesn’t really intend to go back to her and Alex’s room, but she doesn’t try to go anywhere else, either, and so eventually she ends up at that same familiar doorway. Daniel’s no longer standing in it. She peeks inside, a little blearily—she tipped the bottle back a few times on the journey—and finds him sitting in a chair opposite the bed, his knees just a couple feet from Alex’s. He’s leaning forward, elbows on his thighs, speaking softly but with an urgency totally unfamiliar to Grace from the little she’s seen of him in the last couple of days.

“Hey guys,” she says, and both heads turn. “I got supplies.”

She holds the spare bottle out to Daniel. She doesn’t really know why, except his hands look empty without a drink. 

“Grace,” Alex says, in that tone that means he’s about to try to convince her of something. 

“Why is he still here?” Grace asks, lifting her chin towards Daniel, who’s downing a swig of the bottle she herself has just handed him.

“Maybe you can get pregnant anyway,” Alex says.

“I definitely cannot. Do you know the stats on IUDs?”

“It’s magic,” Daniel says. “I don’t think the devil cares that much about IUDs.”

“Oh my god,” Grace says.

“Grace, please,” Alex says. “Just—just have sex with me? I know we kind of ruined the mood, but—”

“You think?” Grace says.

“I’ll just be going now,” Daniel says.

Alex grabs at Daniel’s wrist before he can do more than shift his weight. It’s the most life Grace has seen in him since she drew that fucking card, almost an hour ago. “Don’t.”

Daniel peels Alex’s fingers away, almost gently. “It was always you or me, as soon as that bottle spun my way. Are you saying you’d rather _I_ knocked up your wife and _you_ died?”

For some reason, Grace’s breath catches as she waits for Alex to respond. It’s all bullshit, and even by their bullshit rules, she’d obviously take Alex over Daniel in a heartbeat, but still—

But Alex doesn’t do anything weird and self-sacrificing, like suggest Daniel fuck Grace in his place. Which is good, because Grace isn’t about to let him, and yet that wry turn of Daniel’s mouth is painful to look at. What the fuck is wrong with her?

“Don’t go,” Alex tells Daniel. It sounds like a plea.

“Well, I think that’s up to Grace, don’t you? Something ought to be.”

“Grace?” Alex looks at her with a plea in his eyes.

Grace feels like there’s a logical step she’s missing here, but that’s probably just the bourbon. She’s a little drunk, her wedding night has gotten really fucking weird, and she kind of thinks she might be getting a divorce in a few days. Also, Daniel’s eyes are pretty, and he hasn’t leered at her in ages. Okay, that’s definitely the bourbon. “Sure, what the hell. What’s family for, am I right? Now get this fucking dress off me.”

Alex doesn’t rip it off her, like she fantasized about a while ago. Even unzipping it is almost beyond him, with the way his hands are shaking, and _he’s_ the sober one out of the three of them. When the zipper gets stuck halfway down, it’s Daniel who has to come rescue her. He’s very respectful about it. He doesn’t try to cop any feels.

For the first time, she remembers the lingerie she’s wearing underneath. It’s white and not too fancy, structurally, because she wanted something she could comfortably put up with under her dress for hours—although she hadn’t planned on quite this many hours. It’s mostly lace, mostly see-through, with peekaboo windows over the nipples. 

She was really excited to show it to Alex. Now she just wants to get out of it. She can feel Daniel’s eyes on her and stoutly ignores him, though her cheeks heat anyway. She fiddles for the bra’s clasps herself and throws the bra over a chair. She steps out of the panties and kicks them viciously aside. “Well?” she demands, facing Alex. She’s furious, she realizes. She doesn’t know when that happened. “You gonna knock me up and save our lives, or what?”

Together they get him mostly undressed, but she doesn’t give him a chance to deal with his shirt. That fury simmering in her has settled between her legs, a throbbing, liquid heat. She kisses Alex with teeth and drags him onto the bed on top of her. His erection is hot against her thigh. “Come on,” she taunts, “put a baby in me.”

She doesn’t know how she’s into this, with Alex still half-frozen, looking like he’s expecting her to drop dead at any moment, and Daniel watching them both from a chair across the room. “Come _on_ ,” she says, and finally Alex gets with the program.

Grace doesn’t usually like it rough. No shame to anyone who does, she’s just a vanilla kind of girl. Right now, though, she wants to eat Alex with her pussy; she wants to kiss him and come away bloody. She wants a fight, and she shoves and snarls at him until he wakes up enough to give it to her. He fucks her rough, anyway, shoving into her harder than she’d ever ask for otherwise. It’s as much fighting as it is fucking, and by the time he rolls off her, she’s gasping from a lot more than just the aftershocks rolling through her.

It takes her a solid couple of minutes to remember Daniel again. She rolls her head over to look at him. The room is too dim to make out his expression. For a weird moment she thinks it’s Alex he’s looking at, but then the fucker salutes her.

Grace closes her eyes.

* * *

They fuck again once Alex recovers. “We have to,” he insists, his eyes wide with all that earnest care that always used to be a turn-on. He’s got his hand splayed over Grace’s belly, which would be freaking her the fuck out if she were still capable of being freaked.

“Last supper, right?” she says, which makes sense in her head. Alex is too far gone to notice. Distantly, she thinks she hears a snort.

* * *

After round three, she falls the fuck to sleep, thank you very much.

* * *

Grace wakes up sore in that way that she thinks some women like. As far as she’s concerned, it just hurts. She thinks for a moment the soreness is what woke her, and then she hears a grunt. She peels her eyes open and peers into the dimness. She can just make out the shape moving in the chair Daniel was sitting in before. The shape seems bigger than Daniel. It’s a hulking shadow in the corner of room, well away from the pinpricks of outdoor lanterns showing through the curtains.

Realization slowly seeps through her the way only three am realizations can. Daniel’s still in that chair, and Alex is on top of him. They’re moving together. 

It doesn’t feel like a shock. Maybe she doesn’t have any capacity left for that. Maybe, after all the other bullshit tonight, she’s just not that surprised. At least now she knows why Alex wanted Daniel to stay.

Alex is kissing Daniel. She can make out the pale curve of his back and the way his arms are bent to hold Daniel’s face. Those are Daniel’s hands gripping Alex’s waist. That’s Daniel’s thatch of dark hair. He’s lost his clothes at some point, and she can see his bare knees.

“Daniel,” Alex says, urgent, desperate—familiar. That’s what woke Grace: the sound of her husband saying his brother’s name.

“Hey,” Daniel croons. He cups the back of Alex’s head, and there’s tenderness there, Grace is sure of it. He strokes along Alex’s ribs, a habitual, comforting motion he’s definitely made plenty of times before tonight.

Despite Alex’s desperation and Daniel’s shushing, it’s obvious which of them is closer, and it’s not Alex. She doubts he’s capable of getting it up at all at this point. Daniel’s gasped breaths grow harsher and harsher, and Alex’s hand has disappeared into that close darkness between them. 

Daniel comes with a single, sharp grunt. Afterwards, Grace listens to his gasping breaths and Alex’s murmurs. They’re promises, she knows, though she can’t make out the words. Alex promised her things in that same low murmur. A future, a family of her own. Devotion. Fidelity.

He never promised her the devil wouldn’t kill her. Probably she wouldn’t have gotten around to marrying him if he had.

Alex comes back to bed eventually. He stretches out next to her, and within a minute or so he’s asleep, his breaths slowing and deepening. Pretty soon after that, Grace hears the soft scrape of the door moving against the frame as Daniel closes it behind him.

She lies there in a hazy, waking dream. She doesn’t know how late the hour is when she surfaces to full consciousness again. This time there’s no apparent reason for her to wake; it’s still just her and Alex, who isn’t even snoring. It must be around four o’clock, she thinks. It won’t be dark for too much longer.

Alex doesn’t stir as she gets out of bed. She feels around in the closet and comes out with the silk robe he gave her as a present a few weeks ago—a century ago, it feels like now. He said it was part of her trousseau, because the Le Domases use words like that. She pulls it around her shoulders and ties the belt, so that she’s presentable for anyone else who happens to be lurking the halls at this hour of the morning, and she slips out.

She doesn’t mean to find Daniel, exactly, and yet when she gets to that parlor with the booze, there he is, sitting in an armchair with a finger of something dark in one hand. He’s wrapped in a terry-cloth bath robe she recognizes as Alex’s. His dark eyes follow her into the room. 

“There another glass?” she asks.

He nods towards the table. She pours into a cut-glass tumbler and sits on the arm of the next chair over. “So, you and Alex,” she says.

Daniel snorts. “Yep.” He takes a sip of his drink. 

Grace doesn’t have any room left to be upset. Maybe later. She asks, “How long?”

“Well, he hadn’t reached the age of majority, if that’s what you’re asking. For what it’s worth, it was his idea first. I know that doesn’t help.” Daniel’s mouth twists, and finally, for the first time, Grace realizes what that extra something is in all his expressions, the extra flavor she could never identify: loathing. Daniel Le Domas hates himself.

“Have you—this whole time—?” But she met Alex far away from here, and this is the first time he’s been home.

“Nah, I kicked him out of the nest years ago. Told him to never come back, and yet.” Daniel lifts his eyebrows and shrugs: _kids, what can you do?_ Grace knows better now than to trust that nonchalance—and if she didn’t, she’d still have that memory behind her eyelids of Daniel gently caressing his brother.

“I definitely told him never to bring a bride back here. This—” Daniel gestures vaguely towards her and around the room. “This is not my fault.” Swirling his drink in the glass, Daniel says, “You know, really you’re getting off lightly, or you would have, if Alex had just told you to get that fucking IUD out. Sometimes we shoot the bride.”

“You what?” Grace says. She doesn’t have any shock left for this either. She just feels confused.

“Hide and seek. We have to kill the new bride before sunrise, or we’re all toast. Or the groom, as the case may be. Aunt Helene’s Charlie was the last one to draw that card. It’s a party.” He toasts her with his glass and takes a long swallow.

He doesn’t volunteer anything else. He finishes his drink, and then he pours another from a whiskey bottle on the table.

“What’s the point?” Grace says at last. Daniel looks up, eyebrows high. “What’s this all _for_? What would your Le Bail care about any of this, if he even existed?”

“Well, hide and seek, blood sacrifice, that’s pretty self-explanatory.”

“And this? Fucking spin the bottle?”

Daniel’s mouth worked. After a moment, he said, “Something about continuing the family line? Making sure the curse lives on? I don’t know. You really don’t want kids, huh?”

“I want kids,” Grace says, knocked off-kilter by Daniel showing enough initiative to ask a question. “I just don’t want to _have_ them. Pregnancy, the whole shebang, it’s always freaked me out. I know that’s weird.” She doesn’t know why she’s telling Daniel this, except that he’s listening. She can’t imagine anyone else in the family doing that. “Alex and I were talking about adopting. What about you?”

“Me, what?” He’s looking a little the worse now for all the alcohol swimming in his system.

“You want kids?”

“Fuck, how could I bring kids into this family?” Daniel cups his hands over his eyes. Grace supposes that answers that question.

“How do they die?” she asks.

“What?” he says, peeking out from under his hand.

“When people die because nobody got pregnant or whatever. How do they die? Spontaneous combustion? Get heart attacks?”

Daniel blinks owlishly, his thoughts clearly slowed by the late hour and all the booze. “I told you, nobody’s ever drawn that card before.”

Grace considers this a while. “So you’re saying the devil’s never killed anyone in your family, in all these years.”

“Nope.”

“And you still believe in this bullshit curse.”

Daniel looks at the mouth of his bottle. He thumbs along the rim of it. Quietly, he says, “It’s better than believing my family murders people for no reason at all.” He smiles grimly. “Not much better, I grant you.”

It feels inevitable, what Grace does next, like she planned it all along. Maybe she did. She sets her empty glass on an end table— _not_ on a coaster, her own petty and insufficient rebellion. She slides off the arm of her chair and approaches Daniel’s, and she straddles him. “You think you’re going to die in an hour or so?”

Daniel’s mouth works. “Maybe. I guess so.”

“And you’re not going to try to save yourself? Don’t you care even a little about what happens to you?”

Daniel tips his head back to look up at her. His eyes are glassy and full of years-old grief. “Not really.”

He smells and tastes of whiskey. He sighs into her kiss and wraps his hands around her shoulders, brushing away the silk of her robe. She reaches down between her legs and finds his cock, lax but not entirely soft. She massages it gently. Daniel twitches in her hand and grunts against her mouth.

Someone could come in, she thinks as she licks into his mouth, but no one does. They’re alone under the golden light of the chandelier. It glows against the wood paneling of the walls. It’s gorgeous, this incredible death castle of a house.

She begins to lower herself down onto Daniel and then winces. “Grace?” Daniel says, looking alarmed. He strokes her arm.

“It’s fine,” she says. She can control the action this way, at least. It’s an awkward angle, and she’s not entirely sure Daniel has another orgasm in him, not with all that whiskey in his blood, but by fuck she’s going to try.

He’s watching her still, like he always seems to be watching. He palms her tit at one point and rolls her nipple between his fingers. He grins when the sensation makes her gasp. It’s the least complicated expression she’s ever seen on his face.

She works it out of him at last: a grunt and a tightening grip on her waist, and then it’s over. He reaches down between them, towards her clit, and she shakes her head. She definitely doesn’t have another orgasm in her. In fact, a year or so without sex sounds pretty good at the moment. 

She slides slowly to her feet. She’s really sore now, and she’s headachy with late-night exhaustion. She slips her hand into Daniel’s. “Come on, let’s go watch the sun rise.”

* * *

The sky is taking on a pearly sheen as Grace and Daniel stumble back into the bedroom. Alex wakes up and blinks at them. He sees their linked hands, and Grace holds his gaze, daring him to say one fucking word about it. He doesn’t.

Daniel draws the curtains back, and they all bunch together on the bed with the comforter drawn around them, skin pressed to bare skin, Grace and Daniel on either side and Alex between them. She’s fairly sure Daniel’s holding Alex’s hand.

By some irony or someone’s idea of a joke, it’s an eastern-facing window. The sky brightens so slowly Grace hardly notices the difference, and then the first brilliant beam of light peaks over the distant hills and stabs her in the eye.

Alex turns to Grace first. Distantly she thinks, _That’s the thing that saves our marriage._ Daniel’s grip on her arm is tight enough to hurt.

They watch the whole sunrise together. It seems to take an eternity. They can’t possibly hold their breath for so long, but it feels like they do; when the underside of the sun lifts above the horizon, Grace takes what feels like her first inhale in years.

She and Alex and Daniel all look at each other. The relief is obvious and naked on their faces. In Daniel’s, she also sees the dawning realization of what it means.

“He’s not real,” she says to no one in particular. “I told you. The motherfucker isn’t even real.”

* * *

Grace gets a plan B anyway. She gets it on the drive out, which begins about half an hour after the sun comes up. She and Alex shove their things into suitcases and march out the front door. Daniel watches them go, wrapped up in Alex’s bath robe again. Just as they drive away, Grace sees Becky appear in the door, next to Daniel.

Grace and Alex have several enormous fights once they get back to their little apartment that Grace has always loved. She cries a lot and yells, and he apologizes, and they eventually have some pretty spectacular make-up sex. She loves Alex, is the problem, even if she’s decided she’s pretty fine without a family after all.

She takes a few pregnancy tests, just in case. She leaves all the negative results lined up by the sink for Alex to see.

Alex is seeing a therapist, on her insistence, and is just starting to work through a lifetime of what the therapist calls trauma and Grace calls ‘really fucking weird family shit.’ Together, Grace and Alex are working on a plan for the next time a Le Domas pops the question, although barring Daniel or Aunt Helene doing something really unexpected, they’ve got a few years to worry about it.

She doesn’t push for Alex to stay in touch with his parents. She doesn’t daydream anymore about making friends with Becky or airhead Emilie. Alex hasn’t mentioned that Grace slept with Daniel, and she hasn’t mentioned that _he_ slept with Daniel. She isn’t sure whether he knows she knows. 

They’ve found an equilibrium, her and Alex—just the two of them, alone again. It’s more fragile than it was, but it’s getting better, Grace thinks. She hopes it is.

* * *

Alex is just getting out of the shower, so Grace is the one who answers the knock at the door.

It’s Daniel. He looks like shit. His face is wan, like he hasn’t slept in days. 

“Alex?” Grace calls, without looking over her shoulder. Somehow she’s sure Daniel is a mirage, and if she looks away, he’ll disappear. “It’s your brother.”

She and Daniel look at each other. After a moment, Daniel says, “You look good.”

“You don’t,” she says.

“Yeah, well.” Daniel smooths his hand over his sweater. It’s an oversized one, comfy-looking, but not big enough to hide that he’s put on weight. He looks sober, too, Grace realizes. He’s been at least mildly soused every other time she’s ever seen him.

“Daniel?” Alex says from behind Grace.

Daniel lifts his gaze. He takes a deep breath. “Can I come in?”

* * *

They end up circled around the coffee table. Grace had the kettle on when Daniel knocked. Alex is a coffee man through and through, but Daniel gravely accepted her offer of Earl Grey. He’s warming his hands on the mug, his gaze shifting back and forth between Grace and Alex.

“So—” Alex begins.

Daniel sets the mug clattering onto the glass tabletop. He reaches for his messenger bag, pulls out a black, smoky image, and hands it to Alex. 

It’s an ultrasound, Grace realizes, just as Daniel says, “So, I’m pregnant.”

Grace and Alex stare at him. He smiles thinly.

“You are not,” Alex says.

Daniel shrugs and tips his chin towards the ultrasound. Alex glances down at it involuntarily, and Grace joins him. Yeah, okay, she can kind of see a head there, but also—“Two of them?” she asks. “Twins.” She’s doing math in her head. It’s just a little over five months since her and Alex’s wedding night, and she’s no expert, but Daniel seems a little big for that. Twins, though—maybe that would explain it.

“Twins,” Daniel agrees. “I figure probably one would come out looking like you, and one like Alex.”

“This isn’t funny, Daniel,” Alex said sharply.

“I dunno, it’s kind of funny.” Daniel’s mouth quirks, but his eyes aren’t laughing. “I got the check-up from the family doctor, in case you’re worried about that. It took me a while to figure out something was wrong with me. Did you know pregnancy feels a lot like a hangover? But they’re magic babies, so they’re probably fine. Anyway, he won’t tell anyone—except Mom and Dad, obviously. He promised me a head start, but.” Daniel shrugs. “They probably know by now.”

“This _isn’t possible_ ,”Alex says.

“It’s real,” Grace says. Her voice sounds far away, like someone else is speaking. “He’s real. The curse. All of it.”

“Looks like,” Daniel says.

“Jesus,” Alex breathes.

“Close and yet so very far.”

“You’re not helping,” Alex says.

Daniel shrugs, his mouth twisting unhappily. That’s what’s different about him, Grace realizes, more than the weight or the sobriety or the evident exhaustion: for the first time since she met him, he’s giving a shit. He’s got something to lose, now. “Daniel,” she says carefully, “do you want a drink?”

He meets her eyes, and it’s clear he knows what she’s asking. The soft sound he makes is not a laugh. “I don’t know.”

“Why _you_?” Alex demands. “Why not—”

“You?” Daniel suggests, lips quirking. Alex sputters. “I guess Le Bail has a sense of humor. Or maybe he just really couldn’t figure his way around an IUD.”

“What are you going to do?” Grace asks.

“I don’t know,” Daniel says again, softly. “I was kind of hoping you guys would tell me.”

Before Alex can get a word out, Grace says, “We have a spare bed. You can stay with us while we figure this out.”

“Grace—” Alex begins.

“I need more tea,” Grace says, getting to her feet. As she passes by Daniel, she bends and catches his mouth with hers. For a moment he freezes, and then carefully he responds to her. He doesn’t taste like bourbon this time.

After another beat, Grace pulls away. Alex is staring at them both, mouth gaping open, his gaze flitting back and forth like he isn’t sure where to look. “Well?” Grace says to him. “You knocked him up, too.”

Alex gapes at her a little longer. She lifts her eyebrows: _Do it, already._

Finally he does. He shuffles around the coffee table on his knees. Daniel watches hungrily, disbelievingly as he approaches. If Grace had believed for a second that Daniel was over Alex, like he blithely implied that night in the parlor, the look in his eyes now proves otherwise. Then Alex kisses him, and Daniel makes a broken little sound that haunts Grace as she stalks out of the room.

In the kitchen, she refills the electric kettle and sets it on its base. She looks out the kitchen window onto the city: an ordinary metropolis whose most significant problems are a growing homeless population and an opioid epidemic. Ordinary problems. The devil didn’t cause any of them.

Then again, what the fuck does she know? If the devil helps the rich get richer, maybe he makes sure the poor get poorer, too. Or maybe the second thing naturally follows from the first.

“That asshole motherfucker,” Grace says. She pushes the button on the electric kettle.

When she peeks into the living room again, Alex and Daniel are huddled on the couch, shoulders pressed together and thighs touching, all pretense abandoned of normal brotherly relations. Daniel’s hand is resting on his stomach. They look—domestic. Like a family. “And babies make five,” Grace murmurs, and she goes in to join them.

[end]


End file.
